We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Lady within the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner, a pulse-pounding story concerning the horrors rising throughout us, publishing with Nightfire on July 15th.
Erin’s brother Bryan has been lacking for 5 years.
It was as if he merely walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Decided to uncover the reality, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood the place Bryan was final seen alive. He isn’t the primary hiker to go lacking on this space, and their circumstances go unsolved.
When she discovers the corpse of a neighborhood lady in a creek, Erin unknowingly places herself within the crosshairs of very highly effective forces—from this world and past—hell-bent on maintaining their secrets and techniques buried.
The physique lay on the very restrict of daylight, the final clear place on the stones earlier than the wooden framing within the historic adit started to peel away from the partitions and pile up in moldy heaps.
The coyote studied the chilly, pale factor despite the fact that the air right here was very dangerous, the rusty water within the backside of the tunnel giving off bitter vapors that burned her nostril and would have irritated her lungs if her lungs had been nonetheless a traditional coyote’s. The coyote had not been regular in a really very long time, although. She stood in ankle-deep water and took within the particulars of the difficulty somebody had introduced into the Strangeness’s territory.
The physique’s head—it was a human head, the coyote knew— rested sideways within the iron-sick water, the chin pointing past the restrict of its shoulder because the determine lay on its stomach. Eyelids nonetheless curved over the complete spheres of eyes. Whoever this was, they’d not been mendacity right here lengthy. Even deep throughout the earth, eyeballs shortly caught the eye of something hungry.
Compelled by the threads of the Strangeness twitching beneath her pores and skin, the coyote trotted nearer to the physique. Risked a sniff on the bottom, the traces of blood right here and down the legs. Extra blood on the head, as nicely, hidden throughout the lengthy darkish hair. The human’s fingers brushed in opposition to the plume of the coyote’s tail just like the factors of some form of mushroom arising from the forest ground. One thing secured the palms behind the corpse’s again, a robust synthetic scent on the stuff. The coyote had smelled it on many human issues within the woods, a bitter substance each flat and versatile. As soon as, way back, the coyote had curiously bitten into some and located its grey floor robust however its underside cheesy. The stickiness had clung to the coyote’s lips for many of a day, regardless of how she had licked at it.
Now she sniffed on the physique’s mouth, which nonetheless smelled faintly of meals and, sure, breath. Barely a breath. The physique would surrender quickly. The coyote felt certain of it, and her personal mouth moistened on the thought.
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Lady within the Creek
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The Strangeness despatched a surge of discouragement, a mom snapping at her pup’s nostril when it nuzzled for milk at an undesirable time. The coyote felt her limbs tighten, the corners of her mouth pull backward. Colours flitted behind her eyes, colours she knew with out seeing, shades skewing exterior the canine blue-yellow scale and right into a sundown spectrum. A ribbon of saliva dripped from the coyote’s lips.
Exterior, the Strangeness urged, goading the coyote with a way of sunshine and clear air. A burst of vitality in her limbs. The coyote took maintain of the physique’s filthy ankle and pulled arduous. Her jaws had been robust, however the Strangeness lent her extra energy, toughening her neck, bracing her legs. This had occurred a couple of instances prior to now, and she or he knew she would sleep for a lot of hours after this, afterward awakening very hungry and sore in each muscle.
Rocks shifted and splashed beneath the physique and the coyote’s paws. The dangerous scent of the water grew stronger, however the coyote stored pulling. The Strangeness tickled inside her mouth, maintaining her grip on the leg even because the flesh shredded beneath her tooth. She might already scent the Strangeness getting into the human physique by way of the abrasions within the ankle. The scent comforted her. Higher Unusual than human, in spite of everything.
Exterior the adit, the land plunged right into a slim creek funneling water down the steep flanks of the mountain. A latest, unusually heat rain had raised the water stage, and dampness continued to settle out of the timber and bushes. Any minute the rain would start once more, tougher this time.
One other thoughts tugged on the Strangeness’s consciousness, directing it away from the coyote, and for a second the coyote was very almost herself once more, nearly bizarre. Virtually. She was nonetheless modified sufficient that her aim remained within the forefront of her thoughts even when the breath stopped coming from the dying human’s physique. The coyote whined to herself, figuring out the Strangeness couldn’t bond with a lifeless animal.
However additional ideas on the matter lay far past the coyote’s understanding of the world. Her thoughts circled again to the immediate the Strangeness had given her and glued on that obligation.
The coyote gave one final fierce tug and the now-dead physique slid over a hummock of sword ferns, gravity urging it towards the creek. It hung up for a second on a thorny salmonberry, and the coyote needed to nudge it alongside.
When the physique splashed into the creek, the coyote broke into a gradual run, keen to go away the dangerous smells of the adit and discover a place to shelter out of the rain. However even a mile away and resting inside a hole log, a part of her watched the physique within the creek, slowly floating larger and better within the rising water. Any unease she retained melted on the sense of the Unusual emanating from the lifeless factor.
The coyote put her tail over her nostril and let the Strangeness consolation her with its light thrum beneath her pores and skin. Deep throughout the log, the traditional rotting wooden hummed alongside, a sound that carried by way of the soil and into the timber, one delicate hum stretching for miles in each path. The coyote listened to her fellow Unusual all through the forest, frogs and timber and all types of beings, even the male who had fathered the pups rising in her stomach. His thoughts ran in delicate blue circuits very similar to her personal, flickering on the fringe of their territory.
Out of the blue, a pointy ache ripped by way of his blue buzzing. A picture of two people floated throughout the community of vegetation and creatures, the people barking with laughter as the most important of the pair picked up the coyote by his neck. One thing sharp pierced the male’s facet repeatedly as he shrieked in ache.
Inside her log, the feminine coyote whimpered, and the ache unfold from her to the fern rising close by. To the pair of vine maples sheltering her den. Onward and outward, the disagreeable sensation rippled all through the Strangeness, after which the male coyote’s voice went quiet utterly.
The human physique started to drift away from the creek’s financial institution and drift downstream.
Excerpted from Lady within the Creek, copyright © 2025 by Wendy N. Wagner.
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